Ghosts of Havana (A Judd Ryker Novel) by Todd Moss

wheel tightly. “Judd, you’re working on Cuba ?”
    “Sort of. I’m helping Parker out. I’m not supposed to talk about it. But I’m helping the State Department get the hostages released. I probably shouldn’t say any more on the phone.”
    “Judd, why didn’t you tell me you’re working on Cuba?”
    “I am. That’s why I called you. Why”—Judd paused—“Why does it matter?”
    “It matters”—she calmed herself—“because . . . maybe I can help you? Assist. That was one of our rules, remember?”
    “Right, I remember. Assist, avoid, admit.”
    Jessica knew it was already too late to avoid. They were now both working on Cuba. On the very same case. This was Jessica’s chance to admit. To avoid Lie Number Four .
    “So how can you help me?” Judd asked.
    “Um, I don’t know yet,” she said as she passed a shiny red replica lighthouse announcing WELCOME TO MARATHON . “But I am down here in Florida . . .”
    Her mind spun. Should she admit that she was also now working on the Cuba detainees? Or could she get away with it one more time? Maybe her Cuba assignment would be short-lived? Maybe it would be over this afternoon?
    “Oh, I don’t know, Judd.” Lie Number Four. “You’ll think of something. Maybe if you get stuck, there’s someone I can call?” Jessica offered.
    Yes, Jessica thought, I know exactly who to call.

21.
    CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
    THURSDAY, 11:37 A.M.
    T he cubicle, in a drab room labeled AFRICA ISSUE on the third floor of the old CIA headquarters building, was unusually neat for an analyst work space. Most of the cramped desks were littered with papers, the half walls covered with worn maps, stolen street signs, pilfered campaign posters, and other detritus from undercover field visits.
    The analysts, the academic teams working for the Agency’s Directorate of Intelligence, always lived slightly in the shadow of the other side of the CIA house, the operatives working for the National Clandestine Service. Most of the newer analysts, some barely out of college, competed with bravado to acquire unique souvenirs—a sword bought off the streets of Khartoum, a battlefield talisman used by a Congolese rebel, a hand-painted barber’s sign snatched from the inner slums of Kumasi—to prove their mettle. It was a game, mainly for the rookies, dismissed by the older salty CIA professionals as the youthful follies of intelligence community tourism.
    This analyst’s cubicle, however, was different. It was spotless.The papers and maps perfectly stacked and aligned with the edge of the desk, any coffee stains immediately wiped clean. The occupant of this particular cubicle, a man named Sunday, was also immaculate. His Afro cut tight, his wide face carefully clean-shaven except for a perfectly trimmed short goatee. The only concession to his personal life, a small formal photo of his parents, first-generation immigrants from Nigeria.
    Sunday had no time for childish contests. Not that he wasn’t fiercely competitive. He had inherited from his father an intense drive to adapt to his surroundings and find unconventional ways to get ahead. His father had been a northern Nigerian working in the southeast, a Muslim working in a zone dominated by Christians. When the secessionist Biafran War exploded, Sunday’s father knew trouble was coming and fled by boat to neighboring Cameroon. He had then managed, by ways that Sunday was never told, to get to Chad, then Tunisia, Paris, London, and eventually he joined a distant cousin in southern California.
    When Sunday was born, he inherited his father’s instinct for adaptation and survival, hidden among his genes. Only later, as a young man, did he exhibit his dad’s patriotic passion for their family’s adopted nation.
    From his mother, Sunday received two birthrights: a tight emotional bond with Nigerian culture and an obsession with cleanliness. His mother cooked traditional Hausa foods—goat stew or okra-and-pumpkin soup